International Women’s Day

Baroness Martin of Brockley Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Martin of Brockley (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords and Ladies, it is a profound honour to address this House for the first time and a real pleasure as well to speak alongside so many incredible women also making their maiden speeches today. I am grateful to my supporters, my noble friends Lord Wood of Anfield and Lord Livermore, for their friendship and guidance. I am forever indebted to the staff of this House, all of whom have been unfailingly kind, despite my endless questions. Thank you for your patience.

This is an extraordinary place full of extraordinary people and I am humbled to sit among you, but I do not want to talk about the people here today—I want to start with somebody else’s story. When I was 15, I met a boy. He was clever and charismatic, the sort of person who would light up a room when they walked in. The closer we got, the more I learned about him. I learned that he was not going to school, that he lived on a rundown estate with just his 16 year-old brother and that he did not have any support around him. I learned that he was in trouble with the police and was often in and out of court. But not once did he tell me that a social worker had been to visit to see why he was not in school and not once did he tell me that he had been offered help to try to get back into education or training or away from crime. That was in 1993 and we have been in touch ever since. I moved out of south London and went to university in 1997, the year when Labour came to power after 18 years of Conservative government. While I was learning new things and meeting new people, he was doing the same just a few miles down the road. The only difference was that he was in prison, and for the second time. He was not blameless for his actions, but the odds were stacked against him and it was clear that the system had failed him.

After university, my first job was at the Youth Justice Board, a new agency established by the Labour Government in 1998. It had a mandate to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. That meant early intervention for kids at risk of crime. It meant multidisciplinary teams focused on the needs of the child and their family and it meant prison sentences when they were necessary but alternatives to custody when they could be avoided. It was exactly the kind of approach that might have changed the trajectory of my friend, and the stats show that it worked. From 2000 to 2009, the number of young people entering the criminal justice system fell by over 12% and the rate of reoffending fell by nearly a quarter. That meant fewer victims of crime and fewer young people written off before they had had a chance to begin.

Now, you might ask what the link is between International Women’s Day and a boy from a south London estate. For me, the answer is this: in this country, the circumstances of your birth, including your gender, remain one of the strongest predictors of how far you will go. That troubles me, and it should trouble all of us, because the result is patterns repeated, opportunities squandered and talent wasted. It was that conviction that led me to work as chief of staff to Rachel Reeves, first in opposition and then in government, as she became the UK’s first female Chancellor. In that role, I saw at close hand how the barriers to success for women remained stubbornly, frustratingly high. I have been blown away by the expertise and the energy of so many of the women I have met over the past five years—women who are building businesses, investing in the future of our country and creating jobs. I can tell you this: they are every bit as talented as the men I have met along the way.

Although we have seen progress, as many of my noble friends have pointed out today, the numbers tell a story. In 2022, one in five of all new companies were led by an all-female team yet, in 2024, just 1.9% of the total value of UK equity deals went to all-female-founded teams. That disparity is evident in bigger businesses, too, with women making up just 8% of CEOs in FTSE 300 companies. The cost is not just to the women affected but to all of us, measured in businesses never built, innovations never realised and billions of pounds of growth left permanently on the table.

It is these experiences and the many others that I have had over the years, including working at No. 10 during the global financial crash, that have shaped two of the areas that I intend to focus on in this House. The first is criminal justice, particularly as it affects young people, and especially how we can prevent more young people from getting involved in crime in the first place. The second is inclusive economic growth, so we can harness the immense potential of people from all backgrounds, all walks of life and all parts of the country, whether they are a woman or a man, to create a stronger, more resilient economy.

Underpinning all this is a conviction that our institutions themselves need to change—not just the policies they produce but how they work, who shapes them and who they were built to serve. I look forward to working with noble Lords and noble Baronesses across this House to achieve these goals.